One of the most useful thing on forms is an “autoselect” function. How is this work? Let’s assume that you have a standard search box:

When textbox is focused you can do three things:

1. Do nothing. Let the user to delete all text. Not good for lazy people, right?
2. Autoclear box. But if user want only to change a letter (typo) or add another word, then he should re-type all things. Not good for usability.
3. Autoselect box content. Is just like the user double clicks on the text. How can you do this? Read further to see

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var initValue;
$(document).ready(function(){
$(':text').each(function(){
	$(this).focus(function(){
		initValue = $(this).attr('value');
		$(this).select();
	});
	$(this).blur(function(){
		if($(this).val() == ''){
			$(this).val(initValue);
		}
	});
});
});

What is the best thing with this? Well… If an user just leave the text box blank, that form is auto filled with previous value.

Pretty nice, huh? Well… I think is pretty useful too

Did you ever ask yourself how can you display a “loading” indicator when you make ajax calls using various libraries?

The simple but efficient answer is this:

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$(document).ready(function(){
$('<div id="busy">Loading...</div>')
        .ajaxStart(function() {$(this).show();})
        .ajaxStop(function() {$(this).hide();})
        .appendTo('body');
});

And that’s all. You need to do this only once.

Ofcourse, you can apply some CSS styles to #busy div, using an image generated with ajaxload or something similar.

I didn’t use any other libraries (actually i used prototype with scriptaculous sometime like AGES ago), but i think all cool libraries (like jQuery) have similar methods.

Another great news: with MORE than 50 fixes (but no new features tough) jQuery UI 1.5.1 is out.

After jQuery 1.2.6 and jQuery UI 1.5, I expected that some other frameworks release a new version (script.aculo.us, moo, and so on). For now, only Moo launched the final release (1.2) of their cool library. I don’t know what to say about the library (I didn’t try it yet), but this version of site is much, much nicer.

Even if I’m a jQuery addicted, I saw that MooTools have smoother animation, but their documentaion is weird (or maybe is just me, I don’t know). Anyway, in the last half year, I told myself to try Moo, but every time I give up. Maybe I will try it sometime.

As you can read on the official blog, a new version of UI is available for download. Let’s see how good it is

Ok, as i said before, i will make an article about what option you have when you want to use a carousel. As a jQuery user as I am, the first option i have is Sorgalla’s Carousel. It’s pretty easy to use but has some disadvantages:

• big size - around 50k, maybe more, without another 20k for jQuery
• some IE6 problems - yes, IE6 still has a huge market share. We still need to pull out our hair to make this piece of crap display good all pages
• you cannot highlight current tab - if you want to use it as a tab pagination, you simply cannot highlight selected tab. Or current page.

So, on an older project of mine, i wanted to use a very light script for doing this. Because i was in a really rush, i didn’t focus on unobtrusive scripts so i put some inline javascript (yes, shame on me).

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<div id="slideCtrl">
 <a class="s1 s" onclick="showSlide(1);return false;" href="#">Tab 1</a>
 <a class="s2" onclick="showSlide(2);return false;" href="#">Tab 2</a>
 <a class="s3" onclick="showSlide(3);return false;" href="#">Tab 3</a></div>

Ok, this is for control. The most important thing is that you can put this ANYWHERE in your page. For example, you can put controls on header and slider on footer of your page. Only your imagination is the limit.

The next thing you have to do is to put some markup:

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<div id="slider">
<div class="slider">
<div class="slideWrapper">
<div class="box">Tab 1 content</div>
<div class="box">Tab 2 content</div>
<div class="box">Tab 3 content</div>
</div>
<!--/.slideWrapper--></div>
<!--/.slider--></div>
<!--/slider-->

This script also has some limitation:

• You can have only one on page;
• Is pretty obtrusive;
• Doesn’t do auto slide. Of course, you can set a timer for this, but i wanted an easy example.

The next thing we have to do is to set some CSS.

Width and height for carousel:

#slider {
	width:674px;
	height:185px;
}

(more…)